It's not a bad little article, but I think it asks the wrong question.
I'd start, rather, with the question "Does (fill in the blank nation) need a blue-water navy?"
Two of the four examples Farley picks - Germany and Russia/the Soviet Union - were primarily continental powers and as such the answer seems obviously "No". As such their fleets were superfluous at best and, for Germany, disastrous at worst; dragging Wilhelmine Germany into a naval arms race with Great Britain that diverted resources that the Reich could have put to better use.
The "good cases" would seem to be the maritime empires, Japan and the U.S.; both depend on overseas trade, both are isolated by oceans, at least partially in the case of the U.S., both had, or have, imperial ambitions.
Oddly, Farley chooses to ignore two other great maritime empires.
The "success" is, obviously, the British. Britain obviously needed a blue-water navy, and, in general, did pretty well with it. Unsurprisingly that naval power disappeared with the Empire, but it had a hell of a good 400-odd-year run.
Spain, on the other hand, needed a fleet but always seemed to find its ambitions were greater than its capabilities. Someday I should really find a good Spanish naval history to understand why the Dons never managed to figure out what the British seemed to manage so effortlessly. But clearly, lacking a fleet capable of long-range power projection helped doom the Spanish colonial empire, whether from foreign enemies like the U.S. or from colonial revolt.
Looking at the historical examples, and the current geopolitical needs of China, I can't really see how putting time, money, and effort into a big fleet helps them.
Anyone willing to take the counterpoint?
Let's discuss.
2 comments:
Yeah, I'll have a go.
I agree with the War Nerd's contention that China doesn't need a blue-water navy to compete with the U.S. militarily, because they can sink the U.S. surface fleet at a moment's notice with their Dong Feng ballistic missiles (I've had a few USN vets tell me nothing with a warhead is going to get within cooee of one of their carriers, to which I cold only say... Really? Seriously? You're going to tell me a target spanning six acres is safe from a weapon that's accurate to within a few metres, and only has to get lucky once when you need to be lucky every single time? If I didn't have so much of my own future staked on it, I'd take that bet every time.)
So, if they don't need a strong navy to neutralise the USN, what else might they do with it? And the simplest answer I can think of is protecting their trade fleets with Africa. The Wendover Productions channel on YouTube has a nice little video about how Africa is becoming China's China, where they'll be sourcing quite a lot of their raw materials and low-skill manufacturing over the next few decades, and pretty close to 100% of that will have to come in by sea. Even with the Belt & Road Initiative linking the entire Old World together with road & rail, sea lanes will probably remain the best way to move cargo, and where there are sea lanes, there are blue-water navies.
So to get their African freight home, they'll have to push aside the Malaysians, the Indonesians, Singapore, Taiwan, us here in Australia (though I can't see the RAN looking too hard for reasons to interfere, given China's our second-biggest trade partner), and a country sitting in prime position to cause some trouble with their own developing navy, fellow BRIC country India. Not to mention that sitting right off their coast is a Japan that's juuust starting to recover a bit of the bushido spirit they lost in 1945, which must worry the citizens of Nanjing slightly.
So yes, in my completely amateur view there might be some legit reasons why China would genuinely need, not just want, a blue-water navy. But of course, being a War Nerd fan I'm also partial to the theory that they're investing in a fleet purely out of nationalist pride, because a big impressive navy is an important step in being taken seriously as a world power. Personally though, when I look at the way they're lifting living standards in the Third World and investing big in infrastructure and renewable energy, my gut reaction is that if this is the world they want to build they deserve to rule it.
I cross-posted this to MilPub and this issue came up, and my question there on the whole "SLOC-defense fleet" would be that we - by "we", I mean pretty much everyone in the military punditry biz - REALLY doesn't know how a commerce-raiding campaign would go in the 21st Century.
Is it possible to convoy merchant ships in an over-the-horizon-capable missile and torpedo naval war world? How would that work? Would the PLAN need a huge fleet of ASW/AAW escorts? Hunter/attack subs? Big flat-deck CATOBAR carrier groups?
My thought is that it would be damn near impossible - outside of a massive ocean-clearing campaign that would require a force larger than the PLAN would be willing to build or the PRC could afford. So the end result would be a big PLAN that would set off a naval arms race in the West Pacific that wouldn't benefit anyone, least of all the PRC. And I think that the more realistic leaders of the PRC know that.
But...I also agree that the problem is the mindset "great power = great fleet", and that the less-realistic leadership is stuck there. So I suspect that a LOT of this fleet mania is just a craving for Great Power accoutrements.
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